[24 M] Boris Diary

[BorisKw]

Day 56

Only minor urges this week, might have been because I was sick. Been lying in bed half of the day, the other half I was doing an internship. That kept me busy and that was a good thing.
Had two wet dreams, which were very vivid. One last Sunday, the other one yesterday. Also had sex with my gf yesterday morning.
As a background information, while I was on porn my sex life with my gf was practically non-existent. We had sex probably about once a month, sometimes even less. Not that I didn’t find her attractive, I just didn’t ‘feel like it’ while at the same time masturbating a couple of times a day to porn. So as a habit I try to spend at least one night a week with my girl, not necessarily for sex, just cuddling and hanging out. It usually results in sex though, but I think this should help to rewire my brain.
Anyways, since I had stronger urges the week before I eventually managed to set up a decend porn blocker on my mobile phone. I also did an free online course for internet porn addiction, this helps me to keep on track and sparks new motivation. A problem with these stronger urges was also that they led me to thoughts of infidelity. I wanted my ‘novelty dopamine rush’ and couldn’t get it with porn. So I honestly considered going to a prostitute (even though I’m in a happy relationship!!!) only to I get that dopamine rush from a new female. This was really crazy and I’m glad I made the connection to porn there. I assessed the negative consequences if I’d give in to this behaviour (my relationship, which is really good for my life, going down the drain, also financial problems) and fortunatley let it go.
Other than that I’m planning to write more diary entries, not only for the Rewire Community but also just for myself in the next weeks.

Stay strong, brothers!

[hellojaani]

Welcome Boris! Well done on the near two month streak. Although it was a while ago, I somewhat know what it’s like to be in a relationship and do no pm at the same time, props to you - keep striving man.

[BorisKw]

Day 64

Last week I struggled again a lot with sexual urges. I analyzed my urges in my diary, most of the times they originate either from memories (like missed opportunities for sex in my past with a different ending or sometimes encounters with attractive women in various situations that I fantasized and mo’d about later on), after encountering an attractive girl during my day to day life (sort of in a way, ‘what if I was single and wanted to date them…’ which in the end results in sexual fantasies) or just fantasies from the past randomly popping up in my memory.
You might say something like ‘don’t bother it’s just you’re natural sex drive coming back to life’ or something like that, but for me the problem is that behind that I always feel the ‘novelty rush’ and the ‘immediate gratification urge’ from the porn-masturbation process. The distance for going back to my old pmo life with fantasies and urges like this feels paper thin, despite 60 days, healthy habits, porn blockers etc.
I was on a ball with my girl the other night and some of these girls there with the way they dress and the way they danced really caught my attention. As with porn I could not stop ‘scanning’ them and looking at them. I felt like a thirsty motherfucker and not like being a worthy boyfriend to my girl.
I think the novelty rush and the immediate gratification urges (I want it now!) result in me objectifing women for myself on a major level.

As for the good news: This week was the first time in which I had sex with my girlfriend and didn’t ejaculate right in the first minute. I have sort of a premature ejaculation problem and I always wondered if it was porn induced or not. This was the first time so I’m not sure if this is lasting change or just a lucky day, but its encouraging nevertheless.
I also realized how important it is to tune in to my negative emotions (anger, sadness, lonleyness, disappointment etc.), to analyze them in my diary and most importantly to establish plans to prevent and interrupt them with healthy coping strategies. I set up an emergency box for anger and sadness with things to do that make me feel better (e.g. looking at photos with family and friends, reading poems, listening to special playlists). It’s really girly stuff, but it helps - I think im some aspects we can really learn from our better halves.

[Silent_Mountain]

When you had sex with prostitute you did really selfish act. You didn’t care about your girlfriend. Don’t be slave of dophamine. You just had sex with prostitute because you care about those good feelings more than your girlfriend. And you probably need to check yourself. Those bitches always carry some disease

[BorisKw]

Day 72

The last week has in a way been like the one before. Basic coping habits are established, my daily routine keeps me occupied and I’ve been staying active in my social network (gf, friends, family) so that I comfortably passed the 70 day mark of no ■■■■ and masturbation on Saturday. All good and fine.

However, I’m increasingly sensing a feeling of emptiness in my life, ‘a hole’ that is caused by the abscence of ■■■■. Don’t worry I’m not planning to go back to PMO nor am I struggling in a way of ‘needing to pmo right now to get rid of the urge!’. It is a very subtle feeling, but I’m getting increasingly more aware of it.
When I started quitting ■■■■ I started all these behavioural changes (e.g. doing sport, meditation, more social stuff) and those changes in combination of regaining the ‘new super powers of no pmo’ as you call them, made me feel genuinley high. Yes, I was still having urges, but I also felt the optimism and promising feeling of starting a new life or generally something new (+ the rise of my testosterone levels maybe ).

Now this feeling of ‘being high on life’ is slowly fading. I believe this is natural and eventually good, because it means I’m getting used to my ‘new cool life’ and move on one step. But, as I said before, I’m getting increasingly aware of what I used ■■■■ for in the past 11 years and where it is missing now.

It starts with handling negative emotions, wherde I used to handle them with ■■■■.
Sadness and Anger: Maybe a little bit, but not too much. I have a bit of social anxiety and ■■■■ calmed that down.
Boredom and Lonliness: A big yes!
I see myself as an introvert who doesn’t mind being alone for a while. That has at some stages led me to isolate myself through long time periods and I used ■■■■ (and the internet) to cope with the lonliness and lack of attention that came with it.
Stress: Also a big yes.
Stress (for instance learning for exams) caused me to isolate myself even more. It became a vicious cycle of stress and isolation and ■■■■ eased both those feelings. Unresolved issues also caused stress and led me to masturbate to cope with it.
Rejection/Feeling Hurt: I’m only starting to realise how disappointment in relationships drove me to ■■■■ and masturbation. I think I underestimated that in the past.

It continues that I used ■■■■ as a stimulant (like you would use coffee or sugar) during learning or working periods. I used ■■■■ as a reward after sport or a stressful day, it had this double function as ‘reward’ and ‘stress relief’.
So as you see ■■■■ was an ‘all-around’ medication for all sorts of problems for which I have to find (and get used to!) new ‘healthy treatments’ now.

But it doesn’t stop there. I’m currently feeling sexually unfulfilled, because of the lack of ■■■■ in my life.
How do I know this? Despite having sex about 2-3 times a week with my girlfriend (and feeling content with it in itself) it only needs a minimal stimulus to get my mind to think about sex or to get aroused. It is not the urge to watch ■■■■ or masturbate, just sexual thoughts and sexual arousal. Only the slightest stimulus can bring my mind to this topic (e.g. a movement, body shape, even the most profond features like long hair on a female). When the toughts are there I stay calm, breathe them away, same with arousal - I don’t indulge in them, that’s not a problem, but constantly getting those thoughts is quite annoying. It feels like once the layer of ■■■■ and masturbation urges was taken from my life an even deeper layer of unfulfilled sexual desires surfaced.

It gets me thinking. I’m aware that this is probably (almost surely) part of my recovery and rewiring and in that context maybe even a step forward (who knows what unfulfilled desire etc. lies under the current layer?). Yet sometimes I worry that it won’t pass. That I stay sexually unfulfilled for the rest of my life in my relationship. I think that may be where my fantasies of infidelity and paid sex comes from.
I’m coming to realize that ■■■■ defined part of my life goals and understanding of self worth, without me taking notice. During my whole adolescence it planted a desire in me to have sex with as many desirable women as possible. Only then I will feel loved, desired, admired. It is a belief I have to leave behind and instead I have to form a new one, although I’m not quite sure how to do it yet.

I’m currently doing a lot of cognitive work (like self reflection in diaris like this one, analysing desires, urges, thoughts, developing coping strategies and writing a mission statement). Maybe that is why I write so much (I apologize!), but I’m very drawn to it at the moment.
Anyways, that was good to get off my chest.
Stay strong in your struggles brothers!

[BorisKw]

@Silent_Mountain I did not have sex with a prostitute and I did not cheat on my girlfriend, I think you might have misread my posts. I had fantasies about it, which turned in to the desire to act them out, but I didn’t do so.
I do agree with you that this would be very selfish, just as the thoughts and desires I have are very selfish - addiction or dependence makes you a very selfish person. Because of that I try to become a better man through recovery.

[Silent_Mountain]

Good luck my brother. We all letting go this disgusting addiction. Sorry for misunderstanding

[BorisKw]

Day 79

Last week I was once again torn between the best and the worst of the reboot program.
Since the entries before have been dwelving a lot into dark thoughts and deep sitting desires I thought this time I give you (and myself for that matter) a list of the things that have been improving in my day to day life:

1. Self Control:
   There are good and bad days, in which I handle sexual thoughts and desires differently. Overall I can say though that my ability to disrupt sexual thoughts and the ability to separate myself from that bubbling feeling of sexual desire in my stomach area has gotten quite effective. It mostly works through breathing exercises, but also through thinking at something different, through talking to myself, through music… - there are a lot of ways to handle the acute situation.
   What also helps is a pressing like muscular contraction in the pelvis (like emptying your bladder) and to focus on the sensory input of your penis, as if to show your body ‘see, there is nothing happening down there, no need to get excited’.
   When I’m at home studying it obviously comes in handy to have this feeling of self control (also I still stick to my habitual rules, e.g. no smartphone in the bathroom).
   What I love though is walking in the streets, seeing a beautiful women, getting that rush of sexual energy but being able to stop it right before it gets specificly sexual (getting an erection or fantazising). Then I have this huge rush of pure energy running through my body. It lifts my mood, it makes me energetic, but I don’t dwell on the looks of the women I encountered. It’s a great feeling!

2. Sex
   In short: better quantity, better quality.
   Before NoFap I had sex with my gf probably once every month, now it’s on average 2 times a week limited mostly because life gets in the way sometimes or my gf’s not in the mood. So basically normal reasons, as it should be in my opinion (and not because I pmo’d all day and didn’t feel like having sex).
   Furthermore the quality increased dramatically. I had problems with premature ejaculation before, not sure if just naturally or through pmo. Anyways it has gotten increasingly better. Maybe because of NoFap or perhaps because of more ‘sex practice’. Either way I feel more in control during the act than I have ever felt.
   At last the intensity and length of my orgasm has increased as well. I didn’t even know that was possible for men!

3. Attraction
   I definitley feel more attractive and self-confident. Not consistently obviously, there are always ups and downs in life, but far more often and to a level I haven’t known before.
   When I encounter a woman on the street, waiting for the bus etc. I sometimes notice them giving me a smile and that’s really reassuring and uplifting. Perhaps this was happening in the past too and I just didn’t focus that much on it, but it feels like this has happened more often to me in the past couple of month.
   Obviously there is nothing behind it, since I’m in a happy relationship, but it does give me a confidence boost which carries over positivley in many other parts of my life, even my relationship.

4. Socal Anxiety
   Now in my previous streaks this was usually an aspect that actually worsened throughout reboot. I would get sort of a panic attack in some situations, especially being in groups of foreign people and especially when the conversation topics go in the direction of sexuality, intimacy and porn (probably because of the shame I feel).
   Perhaps porn numbed the feeling of social anxiety for me and without porn the anxiety gets worse than it actually was in the first place. I’m confident though that I can handle this.
   I still feel fear in these situations, but I keep it at bay through deep belly breathing and ‘power postures’. I even had some situations where I’d speak up in crowded rooms, which is a huge improvement for me.

5. Other
   My gf remarked, not knowing about the whole NoFap thing, that I’ve been more relaxed, been expressing more feelings (quote ‘I see you using more mimic and facial expression than before’) and that I’ve been more confident the last couple of month. She’s very happy with me currently.

I do sports regularly and put on a bit of muscle. I started to dress differently. I feel more motivation, more lust for life and activities and I still have a lot of plans for the near future on improving myself!
I’ll keep you guys up to date!

[BorisKw]

Day 85:

I’m in a stressful phase, since I’m having some exams coming up next week. After that I’m on holidays, but I will travel and that needs to be prepared too at the moment (so more stress, although positive). The pre-exam phase used to be a time for me, where I pmo’d all the time, non-stop - it was a stimulant and a stress relief at the same time. That’s why I’m extra careful right now.
I’m currently experiencing all sorts of negative emotions that come with this stress and with the habit of locking myself in my room to spend the day studying. At the moment it’s crucial for me to analyze my emotions in this diary so that I stay on the right path and don’t relapse.

Surprisingly the last week started out with much weaker, almost non-existent urges. (A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one!) For the first time I felt my mind was spending less and less time dwelling on the whole porn, urges, sex thing!
I was at the cafeteria at my university and I totally forgot about the pmo topic. Normally it’s always in the back of my mind, but I was just randomly looking at a girl across the room and didn’t think about urges or anything. Soon as I realized that the urges and thoughts came back though. It was like when you’re meditating and you manage to really calm your mind and tune out your inner voices. But then you realize it and they’re back again.
Despite less classic urges there were more subtle and also surpringly new kinds of urges last week. I’ll explain by illustrating three situations:

1. On Sunday morning I woke up and was exhausted. The day before I was at my mum’s birthday party with my gf and family. It was a good day, but I still woke up feeling very down. I took notes of my emotions and they were a mix of hopelessness, boredom and disappointment without any apparent reason.
   And out of all this there came this thought, just right out of the blue…‘I could just give up’…‘Why not just break the streak?’
   It came so all of a sudden that my first thought was just to agree with this rationalization. Then I realized what was going on and I let it pass without acting on it.
   I haven’t had this depressed feeling ever since, but I’ll reflect on it now so that I’ll be prepared next time it hits me.

2. I was taking a train and having a pee. This may sound ridiculous now, but I was shaking my dick after peeing and had this sudden, really clear memory of masturbating in my bath room back home (it was almost like a visualisation). That was followed by a strong urge to masturbate.

3. Every damn time after sports I feel like masturbating to reward myself. It reminds me of the time when I quit smoking. I always craved cigarettes on my way to the supermarkets and in other situations where I used to smoke regularly. I was only frequently smoking for about two years, but it took me about a year to not feel the craving that badly anymore. I guess I’m just a person that has a brain that as very vulnerable reward/addiction pathways. Anyways that’s why I’m expecting to have this craving for reward for quite a while (one/two years maybe?). Don’t care, it’ll be worth it.

4. Once again I was struck by a powerful urge studying in the library, again I had fantasies about infidelty. I did not give in and tried not to indulge so it was all good, it was a very intense urge though. So I thought about it’s origin and I think I managed to reconstruct it. It came mostly from tiredness (I got up at 6 a.m. that day, which is early for the lazy-ass student that I am), paired with boredom, which comes naturally when you’ve alread been awake and studying for about 3 hours. The last piece came from the day before when I experienced sexual disappoinment as my gf rejected my advances.

[BorisKw]

Day 90

Last week was very stressful for me. More than once out of mental exhaustion I thought ‘why not just give up’. It’s not like that active, energetic drive when an urge hits you. More like a calm fatal feeling you get, that uncomfortably seems to make sense to you in that situation.
Thanks to the habitual mechanisms I set up (■■■■ and app block, studying at public places most of the day, day structuring and many more) I didn’t come close to giving in to this feeling, thank god!
I’m feeling really good now once the exams are over. This phase was indeed a crucial test. The tricky thing is not getting too confident afterwards though. Reading all these posts in the forum sometimes makes me think that many people relapse inbetween day 90 and 120 because they grinded through with this goal 90 days in mind and once there they’re like ‘I completed the reboot, now what?’.

When I had leisure time in the past weeks I tried working on my personal mission statement. It’s a term from the book ‘Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People’ (a self-improvement classic and recommendable imo). Basically you write a vision for what you want your life to be and then you try to live up to it everyday. Easy right?
I’ve tried writing a pms more than a couple of times in the last decade (even when still in school) and I always failed miserably. Why? I just want to much! I have this whole bucket of goals I follow and I can’t compress or integrate it into one lousy vision. I also don’t like it to be so fixed, because you never know what life brings you. In essence: no matter what the end result turned out to be it never really inspired me to follow it for a long time.

So for the sake of the whole NoFap thing I thought it makes sense to try it out again, because once ■■■■ is gone - what else do we have left in our life? A vision can guide you in the time after 90 days when you grinded through, but then realize life still goes on as usual. You’ve gotten used to your new super powers and unfortunately you don’t transcend into a state of eternal happiness at day 90.
So I tried to write this personal mission statment and guess what happened? … yep, again I wasn’t content with it.

I then tried a different approach and it had very interesting results! Basically I just wrote down all the goals that I had for myself, e.g. my sports goals, travel goals, uni goals - you get the point, from every part of my life, where I set out to accomplish something.
After that I tried to reverse-engineer my motivation out of these goals - with honesty! I’m talking about real self honesty here. Imagine you’re drunk in a bar a very good friend sitting next to you. It’s 4 a.m, you just told him about your goals and he just asks you ‘why?’. What you would answer in that situation? That’s the honesty we need here!
No you don’t have to go on a pub crawl to find out your motivations, just an example so you know what I’m talking about.

What were the results for me? I had this vast vast variety of goals, but interestingly enough they all boiled down to four core motivations of mine:

1. I wanted to feel good or at least avoid feeling bad.
2. I wanted the approval of others.
3. I wanted to do something meaningful in my life, something that would be remembered after I died. (This may also overlap a lot with approval)
4. I wanted to create something in my life.

I was happy with my results, it felt like I touched some pretty basic needs of mine. Unfortunately those results didn’t make for a good mission statement either. Again it just didn’t inspire me at all!
Then it hit me. The purpose shouldn’t be about that I need to have these needs fulfilled, but how(!) I will choose to fulfill them. And the answer to that is: I will fulfill them by changing my beliefs and trying to orient my life towards values and not concrete goals.

Now, I’ve come a long way from here, but there were still some problems to be handled for me.
The problem with changing beliefs and orienting towards values is that in order for them to have a real effect on your life they need to adress a specific topic and undermine a certain stance. We can all agree on what’s ‘good’, but in our daily reality these values we theoretically all agree on are lived very differently by us all.

So I thought to myself ‘I may start changing my beliefs and values about the topic that started it all in the first place’: which would be ■■■■ and Sexuality.
When I first learned about the addictive potential of ■■■■ in 2015 there were a lot of things at first that I didn’t want to be true. I grasped that many problems I had were related to ■■■■. Calling my addiction by the word addiction though was something I definitley didn’t want to be true for example. I also didn’t want to realize how ■■■■ changed my believes and the believes of our whole western culture about sexuality and women.

You’re probably thinking now ‘No shit Sherlock, have you read any forum post lately?’. But I think it’s a big difference between reading some classic phrases that get thrown around a lot (‘■■■■ objectifies women - what does that even mean?’) and deeply realizing for yourself that they are actually true (‘I do objectify women for my sexual pleasure whenever I stare at their cleavage and butts in the subway’). If I should relapse these insights about my ‘■■■■-induced’ beliefs is something that I will have gotten out of this streak and that will stay with me.

Back to the point - what are my false beliefs about ■■■■ and sexuality? I made an effort to write them all down. This worked best for me when I had urges, because that’s when my mind screams these beliefs into my face.
Here are a few examples:

1. It’s desirable/manly to have sex with as many attractive women as possible
2. Whenever there would be an attractive woman offering the possibilty to cheat I would give in
3. If I wouldn’t give in it would be out of cowardice and not out of strength
4. I’m a bad person, because of this. A horny, thirsty man unworthy of true attraction, love etc.
5. I’m not able to love.

The first point may make you go - yeah, why not? The second and third point probably - you sick fuck you have a girlfriend! The fourth and fifth point - don’t be so hard on yourself or don’t be such a suck-up.
Your reaction doesn’t matter. I do know all these believes are wrong. They are in my head nevertheless, that is the true problem. All these beliefe and values play into my head when I’m sexually aroused or feeling an urge.

I firmly believe that there isn’t a single one of these thoughts that wasn’t shaped by my ■■■■ use. All these believes are basically messages or results out of messages that ■■■■ has sent to my brain in the last decade that I’ve been using it.

The first one is not only a message of ■■■■, but also a belief that is spreaded a lot through our media and culture.
‘But that’s what men were biologically designed to do!’ you may say. It’s true, we were designed to spread our genes but we were also designed to desire connection and intimacy! It’s as equally important for biological survival but noone mentions this.
‘But people have always cheated or desired other women, its natural’ - people have also always been killing each other so that’s probably natural and a part of being human too, yet noone really tries to justify a murder that way.

Second point came directly from ■■■■. Frankly, the thought of cheating turns me on, probably because it reminds me so much of ■■■■. If you look at the ‘topics’ of a typical ■■■■ vid in over 50% it contains the aspect of cheating I’d say.

The last points are basically the results of my struggle and failure to incorporate these ‘■■■■ beliefs’ into my life. Life’s not ■■■■, of course. I don’t live up to this expectation and that leaves me with a bad self image. Being in a relationship and using ■■■■ will create even more conflicts of beliefs and it hurts my self image even more.

So what did I do to change these believes? I did the same that ■■■■ did. I invented a new set of values and beliefs for myself - that I think are right - and try to recite and meditate on them everyday to ingrain them into my brain. It’s really important.
I think the reason why the religious part of this community seems to be more successful is, because they basically adapt a new set of values through their religion and it gets reinforced on a regular basis through mass, prayer etc. Atheits or ‘less religious people’ can profit from that too.
Here are again examples of my ‘new believes’:

1. It is desirable/manly to be in a relationship with a women you love.
2. Whenever there would be an attractive woman offering the possibilty to cheat I would possess the strength and assuredness in myself and my relationship to decline without second thought.
3. I’m a good person with dignity, decency and ideals.
4. I love my girlfriend. I love my parents. I love my family and friends.

I recite them everyday and I also think about them a lot. If a value doesn’t feel right or doesn’t explain my stance well enough I think of a better way to express it. If I’m still not feeling satisfied I find out what else bugs me. This is really a journey of self-reflection.

As a last example: Practising my new values last week I immediatley noticed how my behaviour in spontanous social interaction changed (e.g. looking at women). I always asked myself, how would the new Boris react to this and then tried to act accordingly. It needs a lot of concentration and mental power but it feels just right! It’s like when you’re correcting your posture by practice and looking in the mirror.
Anyways despite this I really felt unhappy, when I didn’t get positive feedback (approval!) from others. So currently I’m working on finding out values that I can see as my internal approval system. That way I won’t rely on external approval that much anymore.

There is still a lot to work on, but I feel I’m heading in the right direction. I hope this entry gave you some ideas to implement into your life

[BorisKw]

Day 100

I’m currently travelling abroad and have been very busy doing so. Having urges every once in a while, but I’m out of my comfort zone and with my gf pretty much all of the time so not in danger of relapse.

I’m still working a bit on my values, I recite those I wrote down every day. Working on them goes a bit slow though, because once the day is over I’m exhausted.

I will be back home in 4 weeks, don’t expect too much from my diary during that time. I will still check and answer my messages in this forum though, so if you have any questions, problems etc. feel free to message me.

[Invincible_Knight]

@BorisKw

I wanted the approval of others.

@BorisKw

So currently I’m working on finding out values that I can see as my internal approval system. That way I won’t rely on external approval that much anymore.

[BorisKw]

Day 129

Being on a long streak, every once in a while you tend to stroll away from working on the roots of your addiction. The last month was that kind of stroll for me. Not talking about relapsing here, but rather starting to focus on other things and not seeing the habits associated with NoFap (for me diary, sports, value recital and others) as your number one priority for the day.

At first I felt relieved - so many other non NoFap-related things to do! But rather sooner than later reality caught up and I was grappeling with old unsolved problems again.
Strangely enough after the last couple of weeks I still feel I made immense progress, despite not particularly working on it. I mean you always kinda work on your recovery by not relapsing, because you have to work on coping with your thoughts and urges - but for the better part of my streak I have always sort of ‘externalized’ my thoughts. Seems like it’s working without externalization as well.
Nevertheless I’m starting to pick up the NoFap Habits again. While travelling you have a lot of freedom and new input for a limited amount of time, but for everyday life I rather choose to do NoFap with good habits, instead of pure will power.

So what has improved?
I’m feeling more clear about what I want sexually and about how my sexuality works. It’s still not perfect, I have a long way ahead of me - but the difference is there I can feel it, and for a person like me who sucks at tuning in to my inner self and ‘feeling differences and progress’ this means a lot.

During week 1 out of the 5 last weeks I didn’t feel much sex drive at all. By changing my environment radically my body put all it’s energy into coping with the change. There just wasn’t enough space for sex on my mind.
The sexual tension did grow over the week though. In week 2 and week 5 I had a couple of times sex with my gf, who travelled with me. But because of her being sick and on her period for a part of the journey I had some abstinence time as well and was able to watch how it affected me.

For me the growing sexual tension over time is the reason why people keep doing NoFap, and also why they keep relapsing. It’s the alpha and the omega. It feels good. You have more energy in you, a look from a girl can get your confidence through the roof, you start to feel like a true man - it just inspires you to change, anything is possible! However it also blurrs a lot of feelings into a mix that makes it hard to make sense of yourself and your actions sometimes. It can make you very confused too, letting you jump into false conclusions for yourself. It makes you more receptive to stimuli of all kinds (like in the classic story of the NoFapper who is in week 2 and wants to f**** everything that walks) which in itself is always a danger for relapse, especially in the first couple of month.

When I started out with my streak there was one feeling that I had that I wanted to overcome. It was the urge/sexual arousal feeling. The big enemy for most of us in the forum, that we want to ‘fight’, ‘destroy’ or at least have ‘absolute control’ over. But latley this one big feeling is starting to reveal itself as a collection of feelings. I started to feel subtle, and with time very distinct, differences for instance between an PMO-urge and the arousal before having sex with my gf.

By now I’m able to distinguish sexual arousal better than before and this helps me so much!
Because a PMO-urge feels unfullfilling in itself, when you listen closely enough. It is this big, attention grabbing feeling that can hit you like a hammer, but once you grasped it and thought it through its nothing more than hot air and disappointment. It promises you everything and gives you nothing. The difficult thing can be that it sometimes not hits you hard but slithers into your mind so you’re not awar you’re already driven by it. Regardless, it will always leave you unfullfilled.

What I also learned was that this feeling I described is not limited to PMO. I thought about cheating, going to prostitutes in the past. I’m not proud of it! But this kind of behaviour is also triggered by the feeling.
Because I didn’t really want to care about the women I wanted to have sex with. I didn’t care about her personality, background, her dreams, her life - I just wanted to get pleasure from a woman that appeared hot to me.
Many people do that in real life too, whilst cheating, sleeping around and going to prostitutes and it is the same feeling. So in essence this behaviour will leave you empty and unfullfilled as well and is just as harmful to you as PMO.
This was such an important insight for me! Because the key to love is intimacy and love itself is what makes you happy and fullfilled. Intimacy can only be created by being with a woman that you value as a whole person.

Channeling arousal into making love is sexually soothing and fullfilling in the long term, but it takes discipline, awareness, knowledge of self. The best way to develop it in my opinion is through meditation.

I was listening to a presentation of a Zen-Buddhist monk recently as he talked about meditation. He said meditation has basically two functions. The first one is the one it is valued for in Western society. It stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system. It makes you happy, calm and peaceful. It’s what some may call 'a natural pain killer".
However, used like that it is just killing your pain and like the actual pain killers it does not treat the illness causing the pain within you, only the symptoms. If I was running around with cancer and my only therapy would be Aspirin I wouldn’t survive for very long either.

Fortunatley meditation gives you the possibility to treat the cause of your suffering as well. It is much much harder though. A longer journey with many setbacks. This journey should be about getting to know yourself. Knowing what causes you pain, how you react to certain stimuli (I’m not just talking about triggers here, but basically every input from your sensory system - action-reaction style) and also (!) rationally thinking about a better way to react. Answering the philosophical question “How do I live right?” bit by bit for yourself.

Technically you don’t need mediation for this and even if you use meditation you can still fool yourself in many false beliefs and not make any progress at all.
I still recommend it though, because you learn to watch yourself very closely. Just don’t be too overconfident only because you meditate (I’m guilty of this one sometimes!), there are still plenty of ways to be deceived.

Forgive me, my companions, if what I write may sound longwinded, boring, redundant or even trivial. For me it’s important to consolidate insights that I gained through recovery in my mind. Writing in this forum helps me a lot with this.

[BorisKw]

Day 0

On the 24th of June this year I relapsed, after over 180 days of recovery.
This did not happen out of the blue, but nevertheless it sent me into a downward spiral of repeated relapse that I have been struggeling with until this day.

I realize through this failure (or ‘learning opportunity’ if you don’t like the word) that I still have plenty of things to learn and that I use PMO to cope with some situations in my life that are hard to escape.

But I am willing to overcome and succeed! Since it has helped me tremendously last time in staying accountable, I recommit to this diary once again.
My plan is to write weekly about my thoughts and struggles in this everlasting journey.

May we all succeed in this eventually!

[BorisKw]

Day 6

Not sure what to write. I don’t have lots of things to keep me busy currently, so the danger of relapse is technically always there when I’m home fiddling away.
Last week was okay though. Managed to set up a not so challenging morning routine to start me into the day. Found a ‘main occupation’ to keep me busy for the day. I did regular sports, went to a taiqi class - it was interesting. Strangley enough I took up cold showers again. Was not a big fan of cold showering, but I figured out a breathing technique that made me endure them more easily, enjoy them even.
As I write this I figure this week has not been that bad after all. It can be very demotivating to repeatedly relapse after a period of time over and over again. My last streak was twenty days and then I relapsed just like that. Very frustrating. I hope I’ll have a longer streak this time. One of my biggest challenges will be keeping up at least a minimum of good habits during stressful times (exam time for instance) and structuring my days well enough during relaxed times (holidays) and battling my light depression and lack of energy that comes with ‘the void’ of too much free time.

The urges last night have been quite strong unfortunatley. It is very difficult not letting them into my head in the first place. I tried breathing exercises and autogenic training, it helped as best as it could in this situation (I was tired and exhausted and had just visited an evening event with lots of pretty women around). My goals is to keep practicing it so I may prevent the thoughrs more effecitvely from entering my head.

[BorisKw]

Day 4

The productivity and discipline from my last entry did not last. Soon after I wrote it I relapsed and after that I relapsed on Tuesday once again.
I also didn’t spend my days very productivley last week, didn’t do sports, ate unhealthy stuff - I feel like being stuck in a light depression.

I wouldn’t have been able to stay of porn for the rest of the week either if it wouldn’t be for Forerunner. He had kindly send me the pdf of ‘Power over Pornography’, a book and program which I am still doing.

I really like the approach of the program. During my last streak it probably wouldn’t have struck me as much, my thinking was different then. But right now it just resonantes with me.

I’ve wrote down and ranked the positive and negative consequences of my porn use and established a vision for my goal of NoFap. I also learned that it is important to accept urges, to see them as normal and without shame or guilt, to gain power over them by saying ‘I want to have sex with xy’ ‘I want to get up now and masturbate’. …but I choose to do differently…
When tuning in to my urges yesterday I was amazed at how immediatly and partially effectivley I was at suppressing them. I was also amazed at how quickly they can trigger action in me. Almost reflectively, almost no time between stimulus and response.

I will keep on reading and doing the exercises in the book and hope for the best. It feels different now, because I’m working towards a positive goals, I had lost that perspective although it is so important.
Thanks @Forerunner for your help! Also big thank you to @Invincible_Knight for checking out what was going on once my streak was staying at 0. You guys rule!

[Invincible_Knight]

I wish you a great streak brother!

Hopefully the last one you ever have to count!

[Forerunner]

Very glad to hear it, my friend! I can already see from your post that the insights from the book have changed your perspective.

You’ve broken free once before and you can surely do it again, and remain free. Looking forward to your success brother.

[BorisKw]

Day 11

Had a great weekend visiting some friends of mine. We went night clubbing, probably not the best thing to do during the first weeks of NoFap, but oh well.

The week before I was once again not very productive. I did read a lot and didn’t linger on the internet, that was good, but I still had to do other stuff.

I kept on doing the exercises from the Power over Pornography program. I’m trying to make a mental habit out of neutrally accepting my urges, acknowledging that I always have a free choice but choosing my vision and my Top 5 - positive consequences instead. I also have to get into my head that stress, anxiety and discomfort are a sign of me leaving my comfort zone - although I’m not quite sure how I will ingrain that mindset into my brain yet. Recitation perhaps…

Anyways, I will keep on reading the PoP book now. There’s still a lot to learn and implement.

[BorisKw]

Day 18

Last week my libido came back. That’s always a challenge. Had sex with my gf on Monday, but not until the rest of the week.
My urges grew and grew though and I didn’t always adress them the optimal way (acknowledgement, freedom of choice, choose vision). I often felt very tired and exhausted, despite once again not being very productive.

On Saturday I orgasmed by myself, it was really weird. I lay on my bed listenting to some music, but I was wide awake. Suddenly the urge came - a feeling of sexual arousal - that just escalated further and further until the climax. I didn’t activley try to stop it (that may be my fault), but I didn’t really need to stimulate it any further either. Just odd. That hasn’t happened to me before.

On Sunday I managed to do that as well. I must admit I felt the feeling coming back again. I wanted to try out if it will work another time. Like last time there was hardly any ejaculation.

[Apologies if I sound like a weirdo describing that to you. The forum really helps me in my recovery and I feel committed to write about everything relevant that has happened in my journey during the last week.]

After giving the incident some thought, I decided to not count it as a relapse. Mainly because I wasn’t fantasizing about ■■■■ and because I didn’t need to use some sort of mechanical stimulation.
Some people recommend not masturbating in the first couple of month because it is so wired to pornography that it will be like trying to put fire out with gasoline. J.K Emezi even goes so far to say masturbation during reboot is a relapse. I partially agree. If it safes you from ■■■■ its okay, if it throws you into relapse it is not.

It may have stalled my healing, but since I’m only committed to kicking my pornography addiction, not even necessarily masturbation, for me personally it is legitimate to not count it.
In my last reboot (when I had much more self disciplin) I always left masturbation open as a serious option to release sexual tension. Although I never used that option it always helped me to know that it would be not good, but still better than binge watching ■■■■.
Anyways I’m curious what the forum thinks of it so feel free to comment

Despite the two incidents I plan this week to continue my Power over Pornography program. I also plan to spent a bit more quality time with my girlfriend, we didn’t have that a lot last week.